Mamamia Out Loud: The Pop Star Giving The Whole World The Ick

You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded

on.

Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Monday the 19th of June.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Elfie Scott.

And I'm Claire Stevens and I'm the new chair on the show, filling in for Jessie because

she's on maternity leave.

You can listen to mine and Jessie's handover by the link in the show notes.

It's a completely honest handover.

Like I genuinely needed one.

It's very candid.

And that was the only opportunity we had.

It just happened to be recorded.

I'm like, what do I do with people turned on?

What if I, what do I do if I have a controversial opinion?

Jessie was quite helpful, I have to say.

Welcome.

We are delighted that you are going to be here with us.

I'm so excited guys.

Jessie's off learning about these.

And Elfie of course is filling in for Mia Friedman who is literally in the air now on

her way back to us.

But thank you, Elfie.

Oh, that's okay.

Maybe I can go to Europe next.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Tag team.

And on the show today, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been called grifters by a Spotify

big week as their deal falls apart on professional sledging or saying the quiet part out loud.

Plus lessons on overcoming self-doubt from one of the funniest people on television and

a TV sex scene that's given the whole world the ick.

But first, Clare Stevens.

In case you missed it, over the weekend, Courtney Kardashian announced her pregnancy in a very

subtle low key way.

We've got an announcement that somebody's dick still works.

Hey, Travis.

Say what?

Fucking doing the dirty.

Oh, it's here for Travis.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

The one's having a baby.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

He's got a baby.

The one's having a baby.

It was hard to miss it, to be honest.

It really, it really was.

And it wasn't orchestrated at all.

No.

So relaxed and just with close people in her life.

But she was in the crowd of a Blink 182 concert.

And her husband, Travis, is the drummer of the band.

And she held up a giant sign that said, Travis, I'm pregnant.

In the video she shared of the concert, Travis comes down from the stage, they kiss.

He acts surprised, even though I think it's very doubtful that that was how he discovered.

She is quite pregnant.

She's, yeah.

She's got a belly.

Yeah.

Before he went on stage.

No.

I'm sure he's been involved in the process.

But like everything the Kardashians do, the stunt was very considered.

In the film clip for the Blink 182 song, All the Small Things in 1999, an extra holds

up a sign that says, Travis, I'm pregnant.

Oh.

So it was.

It was a call back.

It was all trying to recreate that moment.

My question is, what is Kris Jenner trying to hide when we have an orchestrated Kardashian

moment?

We know that there's something going down.

Okay.

What's the theory?

Somebody's killed someone.

Yeah.

I think Kendall, she's done something dodgy, but they really do use pregnancy announcements,

wedding announcements, new business announcements to distract from anything that isn't quite

going their way.

And there's just so many of those announcements to be had.

I wish I'd been involved in the Megan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation.

The fucking grifters.

That's the podcast we should have launched with them.

That's one of the richest and most successful podcast executives and hosts in the world,

Bill Simmons, talking about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, whose deal with Spotify believed

to be worth about 29 million US dollars has just fallen apart.

Spotify and Artwell Productions released a statement saying that there would be no more

episodes of Megan's podcast archetypes, despite it winning People's Choice Awards last year

at podcast awards and being top of the Spotify charts in many countries on its release.

On the record, the statement said that they mutually agreed to part ways and are proud

of the series we made together.

But off the record, well, you just heard what Simmons said.

He's a guy who founded this podcast network called The Ringer, lots of kind of sport and

pop culture shows and then sold it to Spotify for loads and loads and loads of money.

And as part of his deal, he is a higher executive on the Spotify team.

Now, look, it's not great for Harry and Megs because it's not the only deal they made

when they left the Royals that looks like it's a little bit rocky.

Netflix, with whom they have a hundred and fifty million dollar deal, are believed to

be feeling shaky about that because the three part Harry and Meghan show that aired in December.

Who could forget?

Who could forget that piece of genius was a massive hit.

But after an Invictus Games doco that the Prince has already filmed, it's unclear what's next

and sources say that Netflix are worried that the lemon has been fully squeezed in inverted

commas. The big bucks that Harry and Meghan signed for do not exist today, which is true.

Netflix is not worth what it was.

You know, there's probably not as much money flying around.

But Claire Stevens, are Harry and Meghan grifters or just good deal makers?

So I am and always will be a staunch defender of lazy people.

And I think in many cases, celebrities are lazy and we ascribe malice to what can easily

be explained by laziness.

One lazy celebrity is Mariah Carey, who was singing during a New Year's Eve concert one

year, balls about to drop and she's just sings into the microphone.

And it's like, you're performing for a lot of money on New Year's Eve.

I love it.

Brooklyn Beckham, also just a lazy boy.

So on Canceled, me and Jesse talk a lot about lazy celebrities.

We did actually accuse Meghan of being lazy.

Why Meghan? Why not Harry?

Well, I think we did also accuse Harry of being lazy.

Because he's the one who's, you know, basically never had to work a day in his life.

Correct.

But we did an episode where we were like, Meghan, we're not throwing enough shit at

the wall, we need you to do some things.

And by the time we did a follow up episode, she had done several things.

She had done her podcast.

She had done a TV show and we said, you know what, you're acquitted.

Well done.

Well done.

You stopped being lazy.

Being lazy is not a crime.

I actually respect a person who does the bare minimum and asks for the most payment.

Being lazy for a hundred and forty five million dollars.

Really, Claire, come on.

Technically a crime.

Is it frowned upon?

Absolutely.

But I do think when I saw this headline, I was so excited by it because I went,

oh, my God, they're grifters.

There is nothing more fun than people being grifters.

Then I kind of put a critical lens on.

And I think this might have seemed like a really cool edgy thing for Bill Simmons

to have done in the moment.

But I think it's a terrible professional move from him because I cannot imagine

being talent working with Spotify and then now being terrified that your

brainstorm is going to be mocked by one of the executives on a podcast.

It's a terrible move.

And the fact is that Bill Simmons is not talking about some random Spotify creator.

He is talking about the two punching bags that you are allowed to make fun of.

So true.

Everybody feels like it is just fair game to make fun of these two.

So I don't think that they're like the embodiment of punching up in people's minds.

Yes, there is no higher that you could punch.

Exactly.

I don't know if that's true anymore.

I don't think it's true, but I think people think that it's true.

But I will say also last weekend when this story broke and Trooping the Colour

was on.

So you had all the pictures of Will and Kate and the kids and they're dressed

in the colours of the Welsh flag and we're looking at King Charles.

And everyone's talking about how he looks like his dad.

There's all these royal stories coming out.

And so clearly they needed a Meghan and Harry angle.

And this was it.

They're lazy.

No one was talking about Prince Andrew.

And I just every time I see the Trooping of the Colour, I don't think so.

I don't think he goes to any of those things anymore.

But every time I see a really negative story about Harry and Meghan,

I have to remind myself that there is a man in the royal family

who's been accused of sexual assault and battery and potentially involved

in sex trafficking.

And we are not talking about that because somebody being lazy seems more interesting.

But can't you hold both of those thoughts in your head at the same time

that Prince Andrew is a terrible person?

Probably allegedly, I'm not totally sure that's been verified by a court.

But also that Prince Harry and Meghan wasted all of that money.

Like it's just a shocking amount of money, Claire.

You know how much it takes to like produce this podcast.

You know how much it takes to produce a podcast that requires interviews.

And I will say that Meghan's podcast is fine.

It's just fine.

It's like it's pretty interesting.

There are some interesting themes in it.

There's like celebrities on that podcast.

But that's what you have access to when you're one of the most famous people in the world.

Like the mind boggles at that amount of cash just going towards them for what?

Like a hundred and forty five million dollars is a wild amount of money to make a podcast.

If we had that much money, we could send out a gold bar to every one of our listeners just for a download.

This is the complication here, right?

The reason that you get paid all that money if you're a very, very famous person

is because you're a very, very famous person, right?

It's not because of the hours you're sitting at the mic.

It's not, you know, I mean, I'm probably the only person in the world

who listened to every episode of archetypes.

Some of it was great.

Like it was beautifully put together.

It had the most diverse cast of interviewees that I've seen on a mainstream show.

But probably a lot of that didn't have much to do with Megan, right?

She had brilliant producers.

She had literally had access to the best podcast makers in the world and they made a good show.

But it was kind of the reason it isn't all over everywhere is because it was kind of what we call like quinoa.

It was very good for you, you know what I mean?

As opposed to being particularly interesting.

But the reason you get a celebrity gets paid lots and lots of money

is because of their name, not because of how many hours they're putting in.

But the problem is because Prince Harry is at war with the media

and that is his main job and he sees it as his main job.

He's kind of fucked their whole publicity schedule for anything and everything they do

because you can't be literally at war with Rupert Murdoch

and nearly every other major media brand in the world

and slagging them off in court and writing affidavits about it

and declaring that it is your mission to save the media

and then also expect them to write lovely fluffy pieces about your work.

And so they're in a very hard bind.

And I actually think that Megan in particular is in a very hard bind

because she's an actress who makes a living out of being famous,

who can't really be famous anymore because she can't give interviews.

She can't go anywhere.

She can't work with any media brands.

So in a way, there's been this rumor around this week

that she's going to be the new face of Dior and that that's going to be

a really successful deal for her.

And to be honest, that kind of thing is probably best

because she can't talk about her personal life.

Any little crack that she opens all of the media leaps on

and Harry doesn't like it anyway.

She is not relatable at all.

So she can't do that really to get a big connect on audio.

You have to give a bit of yourself and she can't really do that

because, again, everything that she gives just gets torn apart.

So being a kind of Dior model or maybe doing what everyone also says

she's going to do, which is have a kind of Goop-esque lifestyle brand

is probably smart because she doesn't have to be relatable.

She doesn't have to talk about her personal life.

She can just look nice.

This is such a good lesson in the fact that just because you have a profile

does not mean you know anything about content.

As ever, I'm Megan and I can't wait to be with you again next week.

So a couple of weekends ago now, I went to a vivid event

which was absolutely packed.

It had a sold out 9000 person audience

at Sydney's Aware Super Theatre Stadium in Darling Harbour.

Now, this was very unusual because the event was a talk

and you can't imagine that 9000 people would want to go to a talk that badly.

9000 people.

They really did and I did too.

Yeah.

And it was like $60 for the tickets, even when I was at the back of the stadium.

Speaking of people cashing in.

Yeah, true.

Well, the event was a talk with screenwriter, actor and survivor

enthusiast, Mike White.

Yeah. And he created the global hit, The White Lotus and Jennifer Coolidge,

the actress who rose to fame in films like Legally Blonde,

the American Pie franchise and cult comedy greats like Best in Show.

Coolidge then starred in both seasons of The White Lotus,

as many of us know, as Tanya McQuod, the ridiculous, selfish

and wildly wealthy woman.

How was your caprese?

I was told that the cheese beer was made by a blind nun in a basement.

So the talk was chaired by the wonderful Benjamin Law

and it was basically an incredible demonstration like Mike White was great.

But most of all, it was a demonstration of who Jennifer Coolidge is

and why people are so enamored with her.

So since The White Lotus over the past couple of years,

Coolidge has become this global pop culture icon,

particularly for the LGBTQI plus community,

but for many more people beyond that community as well.

The gays just know how to do stuff.

And for some reason, they're always obsessed with me.

Partly this is because she's spoken really candidly

about how her career was flailing,

how she'd experienced long stretches of depression

before she was on The White Lotus and her career was kind of resurrected.

And there was one particularly interesting part of this talk

where Benjamin Law asked her what she does to get over self-doubt

and Coolidge had this incredible answer.

Well, I'm going to get a lot of hell for saying this.

I'm just going to put it out there. I know I am.

One of the best things to cure self-doubt is just

to go to really bad stuff.

I was like, in college, I went to this terrible production of Oliver.

And and it was just literally like, Oliver, Oliver.

I felt like the seas had parted.

Like I felt like I had a chance in this world.

She I love her.

She always sounds like she's just a tiny bit pissed.

Yes, which I think is part of the epitome.

She probably is. She probably sober or something.

She always sounds like she's just had a cocktail.

Maybe that's why she's a big gay icon.

You know, she was just so funny and she was so charming.

And I loved this moment.

Everybody loved this moment.

And I'm wondering, Holly, A, do you experience self-doubt?

And then B, do you think that this is a fair tactic to use?

I massively experience self-doubt.

One of the things I love about the Coolidge story,

she's a very good example of how success isn't a straight line of ascent.

And everybody thinks it is and it's the only version that we'll really accept.

It's like I started at the bottom now I'm here and that we don't accept

that actually what success looks like for nearly everybody is a lot of up and down.

So I love that Coolidge talks about that and talks about how you can come back

from shitty times.

But of course, I experienced so much self-doubt.

I knew that this year in particular would be a very tricky year for me

because self-doubt confidence wise is because I don't have a book coming out.

The thing that brings me the most self-doubt is writing books

because it is the biggest, like most long term endeavour that I do.

And I don't have one coming out, but I'm writing one.

And although I love nothing more in the world than writing,

it's also the thing I'm most insecure about.

And so any time I go, as I have done a few in the last couple of months,

go to a writer's event or a writer's festival,

I'm absolutely riddled with self-doubt and insecurity and imposter syndrome.

And I've found different ways to try and deal with it.

But this one wouldn't work for me because I think that bad is so subjective.

I'm sure there are lots of people who read my books and think they're bad.

In fact, I know they are because I've read their reviews.

Do you never see I'm trying to write a book at the moment

and reading a bad book is really important for me.

When you're reading while you're writing,

you forget that you're reading the third, fourth, fifth, seventh draft

that this person has written that has been edited multiple times,

that has been workshopped and you're comparing it to like

the crap that just came out onto your screen 20 minutes ago.

I think you also really learn something from bad books, bad shows, bad performances.

It gives you this confidence that maybe if that person had the balls to create something

and they created that, but one person's bad is another person's great.

I don't really believe that there is an entirely objective line of good and badness.

I know that this taste, that doesn't work for me so much as

very much hearing that everybody feels that way.

That really helps me when I'm shitting myself about

going into a green room full of writers because I feel like the person there

who's got a big L plate on my head and obviously that's just an example.

It could be anything in your life that you do that makes you feel nervous

and it could be the first day of a job and it could be a million things.

But knowing that other people feel that way,

I think that when you're first taking on a massive endeavor,

you think you're the only one or when you fail because Jennifer Coolidge

also talks about how her career has been up and down.

And again, this is the thing I like about stories of success

that aren't just straightforward because that's what it's like, right?

I mean, I wrote my first book, it did pretty well.

And so I got another book that didn't do very well

and they didn't want my third book for a period of time there.

You're like, well, that dreams over and it's devastating.

But then, you know, in my story, at least I wrote another book people did want.

And that turned out to be a significant success, just like for Jennifer Coolidge

to open down. But the thing is, I'll probably be back down there again.

Like we all will.

That's what I like about hearing stories of women, well, people, not just women.

She's in her second, third act.

I've been listening on Julia Louis-Dreyfus' podcast.

Interviews women who are over 60, like if you think about life being three acts,

if you're lucky, 30 year blocks.

And she's in her third act and she's having an amazing moment of success.

But she's wise enough to know this won't last forever.

The white lotus, you know, Jennifer Coolidge's icon talk to 9000 people

in an arena is not necessarily the rest of her life.

And I think that's something that I find really helpful when I'm feeling

really nervous, you know?

I think the other thing that has really struck me about Jennifer Coolidge's

story and for a while, I know she's an icon.

I haven't quite known how to take her.

Like I've kind of watched her give a speech or watched her

interviewed and sort of thought, is this a performance?

Is she playing a character?

Is she kind of playing into the white lotus thing?

Or is this really who she is?

And I thought in the clips I've seen from that vivid event, I think you can

really see some authenticity and some wisdom that I haven't seen in other moments.

But something I love about her story is that it reminds you that sometimes

the really crap times are what leads to the success.

So she talks about being depressed and being in your house for weeks of time

and not being able to leave.

And I sometimes get a bit put off by it was interesting just before this

episode, I was looking up like, what do you do about self-doubt?

Self-doubt solutions, blah, blah, blah.

And it's always like hard work, put your head down, hard work.

People aren't always in a hard work phase.

And often when your self-doubt's really bad, you're procrastinating

and you don't feel like you're working very hard.

And so to hear Jennifer Coolidge talk about those times when she wasn't

doing anything, she was crippled, she was paralyzed.

And then perhaps how fighting against those moments and becoming resilient

against those moments is actually what leads you to bigger success.

I find really profound.

Yes, a hundred percent.

And I totally agree with you.

I think there's something very unique about the way that she talks about her

struggles with depression and her struggles with self-doubt.

In the celebrity space, because I think that very often when we hear about

celebrities saying that I was experiencing depression or like I had a little bit

of self-doubt, there's just like something shiny about it to me for a lot of people.

But for Jennifer Coolidge, she exposes the parts that are really embarrassing,

like the parts where you are sitting around and you're not talking to anybody

and you're feeling like really lonely and you probably haven't

showered in a couple of days and it's gross.

And I feel like she's remarkable for that because she really is so candid

and so honest for me as somebody, I guess, who works in creative industries,

like that makes me feel really good about myself and makes me feel like,

yeah, there is always just like a light at the end of the tunnel for these

like really shitty periods where you are just disgusting and embarrassing.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're not always working at your very best capacity.

Like I think she actually touches on the fact that what can be the hardest

about success, and I don't know if you've got this, Holly, with writing,

is when you actually feel like you're in control of it and you're not doing it very well.

Like that's the scary thing about writing a book is that you're like,

oh no, all the potentials here, all the potentials.

It is, but you know what's freeing is there's also a very large dose of luck

in any success, right?

So Coolidge in this third act of hers, she didn't create that character, right?

Mike White created that character, just happened to hit the zeitgeist

and everybody grabbed it.

Like that's kind of like lightning striking.

It's not necessarily of Jennifer Coolidge is making.

She's just smart enough to know grab it, ride it, take it.

And it's the same with any creative endeavour.

You could make the best TV show in the world, write the best book,

but if it's not the right mood at the right moment,

if it doesn't get marketed correctly, if there's another book that comes out,

there's a certain amount of it that is beyond your control.

The narrative that like hard work equals success is not true.

Although I will say that there's a hard of it.

There was a very funny part in the talk.

She spoke about how there are all of these young creatives now

who are just like making their own narratives, like the Lena Dunham's,

the Phoebe Waller Bridges, like other people who like write their own

sort of like first person narratives.

And she was like, oh, I literally never thought about doing that.

I just didn't know it didn't occur to me.

I didn't know it didn't occur to me.

Please.

Mama Mia out loud.

They're doing a mermaid.

If you want to make out loud part of your routine five days a week,

we release segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays just for Mama Mia subscribers.

To get full access, follow the link in the show notes.

And a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

Just a heads up, this segment gets a little bit X rated.

We don't normally bleep out naughty words,

but we had to because of just how wild this new show is.

If there are little ears around, maybe come back later or pop your headphones in.

The Internet cannot stop talking about a scene from the new HBO series,

the Idol, which has been called the worst sex scene in history,

the cringiest shit I've ever seen and has people asking

whether anyone involved in creating the show has actually ever had sex.

Four context. Oh, my God.

The Idol is a new series created by Sam Levinson, who previously created Euphoria.

The Weeknd, who, you know, from such songs as I can't feel my face when I'm with you, for example.

And Riza for him, who, according to my research, has never produced a TV show before.

It tells the story of an aspiring pop idol, Jocelyn, played by Lily Rose Depp,

who's the daughter of Johnny, and her relationship with a self-help guru

and cult leader, Tedris, played by The Weeknd.

It's been met with unfavourable reviews from critics for its sexual content,

themes, script and direction.

I bet it's a hit, though, because it's so hard on streamers.

You don't get ratings in the same way you do on TV.

But none of that matters, because I need to talk about one scene and one scene only.

I am so pumped right now.

It's in the last 10 minutes of Episode Two, and I forced you both to watch it so we can all discuss.

Lily Rose Depp is wearing a top that doesn't make sense.

She really, really is.

It's very tiny.

Really a top.

And she starts hooking up with The Weeknd, and then she says,

I want you to get that robe from my closet tied around my face and a** me until you feel me black out.

I would just need somebody to cut out that clip of Claire saying that, please.

Yeah, I basically felt comfortable.

At this point, he notices that there's another woman just lurking.

She's got like tassly boobs.

Yeah.

So he gets this red piece of fabric and blindfolds Jocelyn,

which means she can't see that there's a non-consensual person watching this whole thing problematic, problematic.

Tedris then says, let me see those a**, which gives me the a**, it makes me feel so uncomfortable.

What if somebody said a** to you, by the way?

I'd vomit.

I'd vomit and leave the room.

It's clear from this point that this scene is entirely created for the male gaze,

which I think is stupid because I don't think it's men who are watching the idol.

No, I agree.

The Weeknd talks too much.

He's like, show me how sexy you are, which is so much pressure.

Can you imagine?

Not for no reason.

Someone's like, show me how sexy you are.

And you're, oh, God.

This whole scene is basically a way for him to get sexual pleasure without him having to actually do anything.

So he just watches her writhing on the bed and the dirty talk is so written by a male who potentially has never actually had sex.

He's like, I want to grab you by the a** while I suffocate you with my a**, which doesn't even make sense.

It doesn't make sense.

I've worried about this episode.

You've had that for a very long time.

He's like, I want you to choke on it, but men, no woman wants to choke on your a**.

This whole time, she's wearing a tiny top and G-string and just kind of wiggling around.

And he is fully clothed, which says it all.

She's also moaning.

Nobody had a no nudity clause in this.

I know. He's like, I won't do nudity.

She will do all the nudity for me.

But basically, it started this conversation online about the purpose of sex scenes on screen.

And especially the purpose of sex scenes post me to where we feel a bit uncomfortable seeing like gratuitous or I want to have pretend sex with my co-star.

We feel really weird about that.

Basically, the sense seems to be that we shouldn't really be watching scenes where it's just about performing sex.

It should actually contribute to the storyline.

And I learned a lot about the storyline in these two minutes.

I learned that I do not want to watch this show.

No, no.

But usually in good art, a sex scene is about establishing intimacy or fast tracking a relationship and basically creating a setting where things are said or something is expressed in a more private setting than when they're just in public with friends or whatever.

Holly, you've written some sex scenes.

Is it as humiliating as it seems?

Yes.

Oh, no, it's not.

This is so humiliating.

I can't.

And when I was watching it and I only watched it because you told me to and the team have been talking about it.

Everybody's been talking about this show.

I mean, the casting is wild for a start, right?

But I was watching it and I was thinking, is there anyone finding this hot?

I was wondering.

And I was thinking about guys I know.

And I was like, maybe a teenage boy.

Yeah, somebody might be finding this hot because it was not hot.

No.

And I was really disappointed in the weekend.

Not angry, just disappointed because like even old people like me like the weekend, you know, I have weekend songs on my playlist.

Now, every time I hear them, I'm just going to see his creepy face saying, make your throat wet.

I'm like, get that throat wet.

I believe everyone was saying the weird thing is when he sings those types of lyrics, it's kind of sexy.

When he speaks them, we do not like sex scenes.

So I have got some sex scenes in my books.

They are very hard to write because avoiding cliche is the rule, right?

And it's very hard to avoid cliche and sex scenes.

You find yourself writing it and then go, well, I can't use that word, that word and that word because it sounds like a bad porno.

And then you're like, oh, so what's another word I could use for that?

And then you're like, no, that's worse.

Like nobody wants to read his throbbing, you know, like, it's awful.

So my rule of writing sex scenes is always to do as little as possible.

I'd be like the weekend watching this, but to do as little as possible in terms of description and just try and convey like an urgency of feeling.

When you write a sex scene, do you imagine your mum reading it?

Everybody asks that.

My friends who said, I can't believe you put sex in your book because of your mum.

And I'm like, I think my mum knows about sex, your mum.

She's probably had it at least once.

And I have never discussed it with her.

I hope to never discuss it with her.

But I know she reads my books and she's never commented on them.

So no, I black out my mother when I'm writing a sex scene.

But my God, if I'd written this sex scene, she'd be saying, Holly, we need to have a chance.

LTV, why?

Why is this scene in there?

Why does it exist?

And also Lily Rose Depp, right?

And I know this makes me sound old, but she's very young.

But she looks the spitting image of her mother, Vanessa Parity, who when I was young,

she was the most, you know, sort of iconic beauty, this tiny little blonde French lady.

And she was like locked up in cages and Chanel ads and stuff.

It just feels like nothing has changed.

There is an element of hotness to this scene.

So you did think there was hotness.

I think there is some hotness.

And I think that mostly, exactly.

And I think mostly it's informed by watching internet pornography.

You become acclimatized to the idea that you view yourself sexually through the male lens,

because literally that's what you've been doing for like 10 years.

So I do think that there is an element of hotness in this.

Although I do think it's funny because I thought that a little bit.

And then I watched it with my boyfriend and he was like, this is weird and uncomfortable.

Let's turn it off. He hated it.

The thing that bothers me about the sex scene is actually not so much the sex scene itself.

It's all of the context around it.

So Holly, you didn't actually watch the rest of the episodes because you won't now.

But what really actually pisses me off about this show so far, at least, we're only two episodes in,

is that Lily Rose Depp's character is entirely defined by her trauma.

She is literally just walking trauma.

There's no other defining aspects to her personality.

Nobody knows what she wants.

Nobody really knows what she likes.

She's just trauma.

She's trauma when she's filming a music video.

She encapsulates that when she's doing a photo shoot.

And firstly, I think that's offensive because it's really unfair to people who have actually,

you know, who have survivors of complex trauma.

It makes them like widdles them down to this one characteristic and ignores the fact that they're multifaceted personalities.

But then it's also just shitty writing.

And I think that that's what pisses me off in this scene is that yet again,

we have absolutely no idea what Lily Rose Depp actually wants.

There's just no real communication of her urges or her pleasures other than saying get the robe from the closet.

That's what really upsets me about it.

And yes, I think that the throat wetting is just it's all just lame.

It just reads like a 14 year old boy wrote it.

But I do think that there is an element of like domination that might be read as hot.

It's interesting because there was a conversation a while ago about how sex scenes in mainstream shows are dying out.

Partly that's because they're fraught and also because there is so much porn that if you want to watch sexy stuff,

you just go and watch sexy stuff.

Right. Whereas I think, you know, in a previous world, that wasn't the case.

And people did used to get a certain amount of jollies in inverted colors from their TV shows that they're watching.

Please say jollies to Ken Jollies.

Might have felt uncomfortable of accessing traditional porn, women in particular.

And you think about some shows that have very successful sex scenes from a female perspective.

People love that.

Women love because I was going to say people love that because all porn is male gaze.

So the reason I think sex scenes can be really powerful in TV shows and movies is when it's the other gaze

and shows something else and actually shows the intimate side of sex rather than this.

Oh, God, it's just so disgusting.

But Outlander.

Yeah, I was about to say.

It's a beautiful sex scene.

And I was wondering if that was a particular generational reference.

But like, I know women for whom Outlander has like reawakened their sex weight.

Can you explain what makes it hot?

I've never seen it.

It's female gaze.

Female gaze.

It's all about her pleasure.

Yeah, yeah.

And Bridgerton.

I thought Bridgerton also.

Oh, Bridgerton, yes.

Yes, just excellent because it is about her and her pleasure.

This, the fact that Lily Rose Depp is she does appear to be enjoying it.

This just isn't real.

And it makes me really angry because I think, OK, porn's one thing.

And I hope I hope that on some intellectual level, we all know that it's bullshit.

But when this enters the mainstream and you have scenes like that and you have potentially

young men or young women actually seeing scenes like that and thinking that's how

they're meant to behave, there was nothing in that sex scene for her.

Yeah. Absolutely nothing.

I've got a recommendation before we go.

In fact, I've got two quick recommendations and they are movies that I have watched on

the weekend, right?

I know there are lots of people who like to watch a movie on the weekend at home.

These are not family movies.

These are for grownups.

The last two weekends, I've watched two movies that could not be more different

from each other, which goes back to my point about what one person think is terrible.

I like all kinds of things, both of which were absolutely brilliant.

Last Friday night, Brent and I watched Cocaine Bear.

Millions of dollars worth of cocaine fell from the sky this morning in Knoxville,

Tennessee. There's more of this out there.

They dumped it somewhere.

I'm looking for my daughter's first is a dangerous place.

Hey, Henry, check it out.

Something got into it.

A deer, maybe.

A lot of cocaine was lost.

I need you to go and get it.

No, no, no, no. Don't eat that. Don't eat that.

Let's see what kind of effect that has on it.

It's available to rent on Apple.

You can buy it on Amazon.

Cocaine Bear, obviously, I'd heard and read a lot about it.

It's directed by Elizabeth Banks.

It's based on a vaguely true story about a lot of cocaine that gets dumped out

of a plane in a forest in the 80s and a bear eats it.

Oh, darling.

And then in the movie, the bear becomes a psycho killer.

And then stalks people in the forest and rips them to pieces.

I love bears.

I think they're so cute.

This movie sounds terrible, but is so good.

Is it funny or is it hilarious?

So it's a comedy.

It's 80s, so it's got this soundtrack and all the caricatures are ridiculous.

The violence is hyper violence.

So it's like it's gory, right?

You know, but in a silly way, like it's not gory in a creepy, hyper real way.

It's deliberately over the top gory.

I can't remember the last time I watched a movie where I had so much fun.

Fun is something that you do not get a lot of these days in movies and general mainstream art.

Cocaine Bear is much funner than you thought.

And Elizabeth Banks is a dead set genius.

And then I watched it couldn't be further away.

And obviously this came out last year and it got all the Oscar nominations and stuff.

And I was always going, that looks like really hard work.

I'm not going to watch it.

And that's the banshees of an assuring.

Carl and Sonny Larry, didn't you?

He used to be the best of friends.

We're still the best of friends.

No, you're not.

Who says we're not?

I said somewhere else.

Now, if I've done something to you, just tell me what I've done to you.

Well, you didn't do anything to me.

I just don't like you no more.

Do the night, two hours you spent talking to me

about the things you found in your little donkey's shite, Daddy.

Well, it wasn't my little donkey's shite.

It was my pony's shite, which shows how much you were listening.

How? I haven't said anything yet.

Isn't it when people tell you how great a movie is and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's great.

And then you watch it and you're like, oh my God, it's so great.

It's one of those ones where I feel like the picture has like a bluish hue over it.

And anything that looks a bit physically dark, I'm like, hmm.

Actually, it's quite beautiful and green.

Yeah, I think you'll like it.

It has the most simple setup.

Just the storytelling is amazing, but basically we're on an island off Ireland in the 1920s.

So basically all that matters about that is it's a very, very isolated small community.

Two male friends, one's a bit older, one's a bit younger,

but they're both middle-aged dudes fall out.

That's the premise.

One guy goes to knock on his door to go to the pub as they do every single day at two o'clock.

And the guy just doesn't want to go to the pub with him anymore.

And that's where the movie begins.

And then what happens, it's just absolutely, it's surprising.

It's thoughtful.

It's sad.

It's funny, just unbelievably good.

Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleason, and you can stream it on Disney Plus.

So there couldn't be two more different movies, and they are both absolutely brilliant.

That is all.

Thank you for listening to Mamma Mia Out Loud today.

It is Australia's number one news and pop culture show.

This episode was produced by Emmeline Gazillas and Susanna Makin.

The executive producer is Eliza Ratliff with Audio Production by Leah Porges.

Bye.

Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.

If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to do it.

There's a link in the episode description.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.